Shawn Ryan Show - #291 Joe Kent - His Message to President Trump on Ending the War With Iran

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Joe Kent is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer, former CIA paramilitary officer, and until recently served as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, stepping down from the post in March 2026 following a principled disagreement over U.S. policy in the Iran war. An Oregon native and graduate of Norwich University in Strategic Defense Analysis, Kent served in the U.S. Army for 20 years, completing 11 combat deployments across the Middle East and other high-threat regions. His military career included service with the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces, and U.S. Army Special Operations Command, earning numerous commendations, including six bronze stars. After retiring from the Army in 2018, he served as a paramilitary officer in the CIA's Special Activities Center. Kent brought decades of frontline counterterrorism experience to the role, shaped in part by personal sacrifice: in 2019, his wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing while serving in Syria. Follow the markets: https://polymarket.com/event/us-x-iran-ceasefire-by https://polymarket.com/event/us-forces-enter-iran-by Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Live better longer with BUBS Naturals. Get 20% OFF on collagen, MCT creamers, and more with code SHAWN at https://bubsnaturals.com/srs Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide. Joe Kent Links: X - https://x.com/joekent16jan19 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dot com forward slash today. Visit ixl.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Welcome back, man. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. It's an honor to have you. So, you resigned last week. I did. I did. How's that going? About as good as resigning to the president can go, I think. It's definitely created a lot of buzz. I just I just want to commend you, man. I mean, I know that took a lot of courage. That took some serious balls to do that, especially with the statement you made.

Wow. And, you know, internally, but just me and myself. I haven't been happy about really much of anything that's been going on. I feel like it's been a 180 bait and switch from what we were told in just about every aspect. and I've been wondering, because I know there's people frustrated up there, and I've been wondering, what are you still doing in the position if you're not doing the fucking job that you were supposed to do? Why are you still there?

Is it power? Because it's not power. They might think it's power, but if you're not able to do the fucking job that you're there to do, then you're powerless, right? That's the conclusion that I came to. I mean, after a year of really, you know, trying as hard as we could to advance what we believe the agenda was, in particular, keeping us out of endless wars and preventing, you know, more bloodshed overseas and then potentially more blowback terrorism here. You know, I just felt like we weren't being effective. I wasn't being effective anymore.

And so for me, it's like I don't want to stay just because I have a title, some degree of, I don't know, prestige, whatever. I don't want to stay for that. I want to stay for the mission. But then also just seeing, I'm sure we'll get into it, there's things I mentioned in the resignation letter, seeing the way we're being slow walked and then rapidly entering this war, I had to say something about it.

I had to, number one, I couldn't be a part of it once the coffin started coming back from Dover, from overseas to Dover. I just couldn't be a part of it just based on all the experiences I had had previously because I'd said to myself years ago, if I was ever in a position to prevent us from getting involved in a quagmire,

I wouldn't be quiet about it. I would say something about it. And so that weighed heavily on me. But then I truly believe, like I said in the letter, that the way that the president was influenced by the media, but then also by Israeli government officials and the way that decision-making took place in a compartmentalized environment,

compartmentalized in the sense that the president and didn't have a bunch of, didn't have much in terms of people giving him alternative viewpoints that our country was in a bad spot. And the most effective thing that I could do was resign and resign publicly. You get a ton of hate and you're being attacked. The FBI's coming after you. You've been accused of leaking. You've been accused of all kinds of stuff.

It's ridiculous in my mind. But, you know, I think the one thing that you've been accused of, the most is, is, I mean, people are pissed that you called Israel out. They're really, really upset. And they make it sound like there's zero justification for that. But, you know, I have a couple of things right here that I want to read off. I mean, you're saying that the administration president himself was influenced to strike Iran for Israel's benefit. I mean, Rubio said that we hit them.

because Israel was going to hit them first. Then the Wall Street Journal had an article out. I think it was last week, maybe the week before. And this is quoted. To help make the case on Iran, Lindsay Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country's intelligence agency. This is in quotation. They tell me things our own government won't tell me, he said.

he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. Netanyahu showed the president intelligence that persuaded Trump to go ahead, Graham said. I mean, this is, it's Routers, about an hour ago today. Routers. Less than 48 hours before the U.S. Israeli strike on Iran began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone to President Donald Trump about the reasons for launching the kind of complex far off the far off war the American leader once had campaigned against i mean it's it's not absurd that you're saying that the president's being influenced by israel at all all the publications are talking about this everyone's talking

about this senator lindsay graham is actually bragging about this ted cruise was what Ted Cruz was on the flight. Yep. So what, how was this like some kind of fucked up conspiracy? Like all the signs. Yeah. They're trying to shut people up by saying you're, you're a conspiracy theorist,

you're anti-Semitic, etc. But yet they will come out and they will say we had to attack Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran. I mean, Secretary of State Rubio said that. The president said it. Many others have as well. So it's right there up in our face. And so again,

And for me, it was just something that I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't influence anymore from the inside and I could no longer be a part of. But it's insane. I mean, and even if, do you know Israel spent $6.4 billion on this war since March? You know how much the U.S. has spent? 18, approximately 18 to 25 billion with another request for another 200 billion from Congress. Yeah. Now, why the fuck are we the ones pay floating the bill for this?

Because that's the way it is every time. And the Israelis will have their objectives. They will convince senior American officials that this is also their objectives. And if the Americans don't agree, then the Israelis will set off a series of actions that make us react. And the next thing you know, we're having to contribute our blood and our treasure. And that same playbook is playing out now. And I referenced the Iraq War. I reference what happened in Syria as well in my letter because this is the same playbook we've seen over and over again.

And, you know, you and I saw it at the tactical level when we were deployed in the war. on terror, and then now I saw it at pretty senior levels take place over the course of the last year. We're going to get into all this. I want to start by reading President Trump's statement today on truth. I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. Based on the tenure and tone in these of these in-depth, detailed and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against

Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period. Subject to this success of the ongoing meetings and discussions, thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. Do you know what Iran's response is to this? I've seen some of it. They immediately responded. And, you know, I would love to believe our president and our administration, but just like we talked about at the very beginning, everything that has come out has been a bait and switch, complete 180 fucking lie. This is what Iran says. The Iranian foreign ministry and state broadcaster IRIB stated, in quotes, no conversation has taken place between Iran and Iran.

in the U.S. And Trump's claim about having these talks is false. They described it as psychological warfare intended to manipulate energy prices, markets, and buy him time. And as senior Iranian security official quoted, Tehran is not in talks with Trump and that he backed down from attacking energy infrastructure after Iran's credible military threats and market pressure. has been and is not any negotiation underway. IRGC, linked outlets in Iran's parliament speaker called reports of negotiations, end quotes, Trump's own words, fake news. We're in a bad situation. I mean, I pray that this five-day somewhat truce, I hope it lasts. The problem is the Israelis have said they won't stop striking throughout the entire period. They came out and said they don't

care. Right. So this is this is the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that we right now are not capable of restraining the Israelis. I think if President Trump focuses on it, I think he has the power to restrain the Israelis. But that's the key first step in any formula towards peace. He's got to restrain the Israelis before he can even get the Iranians to the negotiating table. Now, there's a lot of speculation that maybe the president made that statement to jet launch the stock market today. Here's a post. Just minutes before Trump's announcement of talks with Iran, massive traders hit the market. In one move, $1.5 billion in S&P 500 futures were purchased.

This trade was so large, it sent the entire index 0.3% higher that exact minute. 192 million in oil futures were also sold. These orders were four to six times larger than anything else at that. time, whoever made those trades made $60 billion. I wonder if that was Congress. I wonder if that was insider trading from Congress, the administration, the Senate. I hope people look into that. I hope they look into it too. I hope they look into it because it's definitely, it definitely should be researched. Well, a lot of people are looking into it because it's going viral on X right now. And, you know, it's a good point. Even if it was, you know, worst case scenario and this

be very bad, a way to make money. At the end of the day, the five days expire, we're still in the exact same spot that we're in, where there's going to be a stranglehold from the Straits of Hormuz. There's going to be continued escalation. Energy prices, even if they stabilize for this five days, what's going to happen when day five arrives?

We have a problem that we have to solve. Again, look, I believe that President Trump can solve it. Restrain the Israelis, work with the GCC countries. That's the way to get out of this. Well, Joe, let me give you a quick, Just a quick introduction, because I think a lot of people have forgotten just exactly who the fuck you are and what you've done for this country. So, Joe Kent, former director of National Counterterrorism Center, retired Green Beret, former member of a classified special missions unit, former CIA paramilitary officer, gold star spouse with 11, with 11 combat deployments, six bronze stars, author of Send Me, the True Story of a Mother at War, a tribute to Shannon's courage in a testament to what real service looks like.

Trusted by President Trump as his foreign policy advisor and leader, and the leader who most recently served as head of counterterrorism for the United States of America, now being investigated by the FBI for leaking classified information. I wonder how many of the pedophiles that were in the Epstein files. I wonder how many of those pedophiles have active FBI investigation. on them. Probably fucking zero. Probably fucking zero. As of this recording, Polymarket says there is a 13% chance that U.S. forces will enter Iran by

March 31st and a 19% chance of a U.S. Iran ceasefire by March 31st. What do you think about those odds? A ceasefire, I'm skeptical. Again, until the Israelis are restrained, there won't be a ceasefire. Boots in the ground, as you know, When you have combat resources in theater and you've got active combat going on, saying that you can control any of these factors is more of a wish than a plan. So my fear is that we could rapidly escalate.

Let's talk about your resignation. And what was it? I mean, how long have you been frustrated with what's going on? Basically since the lead up to the first iteration of our conflict with Iran in June, I was very frustrated that we had kind of backed ourselves into a corner artificially. I was and remained a big supporter of President Trump's overall thesis of foreign policy, of peace through strength, of stopping us from getting involved in costly wars. In particular with Iran, I think President Trump was uniquely postured to cut a great deal with Iran.

He had in the first Trump administration, he had killed Qasem Soleimani, the terror mastermind. once he left office, the Iranians went right back up to their old tricks. They funded their proxies. They were attacking our troops in the region. October 7th happened. America generally was not respected by the Iranians. When Trump came back into office, the Iranians automatically said, okay, wait a sec, this is a whole different administration.

We might be able to cut a deal with this guy, but also if we don't, he will use force like he did against Qasem Soleimani. So they stopped their proxies from attacking us. The last time I was on your show, we were talking about how there had been been over, I think, 150, 200 attacks against our forces in Iraq and Syria, that stopped when Trump came into office because the Iranians knew who was back. They also knew that President Trump was willing to make a deal and actively seeking a deal. President Trump deployed, I think, a very, very competent diplomat, Steve Whitkoff, to get a deal going with the Iranians. Now, this was a major threat

to the Israelis, because the Israelis viewed this as a prime time and Trump as the prime vehicle to use for regime change in Iraq. Now, President Trump's stated policy had been. and he says this all the time, that Iran can't have a nuclear mom. Now, the Iranians actually agreed with President Trump, and they had a prohibition, a Fatwa, a religious decree on actually producing a nuclear weapon that had held since 2004. And what the Iranians did say was, like, hey, we're not going to make a nuclear bomb, but we want the ability to enrich uranium because they had seen what had taken place in Libya and Iraq. And they said, hey, if we go the Qaddafi route in Libya and say, here's all of our nuclear making material, then they're a sitting duck. Then they can be invaded

and regime changed at any given time. They saw the Saddam route if they actually pursued a weapon or even like kind of BS'd that they had a weapon, that same thing. They would be immediately invaded. So they kind of had this ability to say, hey, we have a prohibition of a nuclear weapon, but we have some ability to enrich.

This was a major threat to the Israelis goal. So what I watched the Israelis do over the course of the last year was use their government officials, engaging with our government officials, but then also their surrogates in the media, Mark Levin, who I'll talk to you tonight, mainstream media, think tanks, foundation for defensive democracies, a lot of talking heads on Fox News, to move the red line. So Trump had said my red line is no nuclear weapons.

Diatora said, great. I don't want nuclear weapons either. Let's talk. So they move the red line by saying enrichment. Iran can have no enrichment. Enrichment equals a nuclear weapon, which is just fundamentally not true. So that would be parroted from officials in the Israeli government and then also on the news. I mean, let's backtrack.

Yeah. I don't think not one of our 18 intelligence agencies had mentioned that Iran was enriching uranium, correct? They were doing enrichment to some degree. So there was enrichment. For no nuclear weapons. But no nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons. And we knew all 18 intelligence agencies agreed that the fatwa against actually making a nuclear weapon was holding and the Iranians were not making a nuclear weapon.

So Tulsi Gabbard testified to that last year. She just testified to it again this year that the Iranians, under the previous Supreme Leader, who was just killed. killed. Now the Iranians more than likely are going to change their strategic outlook. That's my guess. My guess is like, hey, a lot of their hardliners are now saying, hey, do you see what this moderation got us? And now they're going to attempt to buy one or spread. That's just my guess. But for the last year, prior to this last conflict kicking off, we did not assess that they're trying to make a nuclear weapon. So that's why they had to move the red line and say enrichment. And so finally, through official engagements and the media

continuing to echo this, they basically got the U.S. talking point to change that Iran could not have any kind of nuclear enrichment. And that was a non-starter for the Iranians. And that's how we basically got into the 12-day War Operation Midnight Hammer. Again, 12-day war launched by the Israelis. We said, hey, we're going to come in. We're going to do a series of limited strikes to take away any nuclear capability that Iran may have. And then we're done. Now, at the time, we had seen myself and others had seen how aggressive the Iranian, I'm sorry, the Israelis were about wanting regime change inside Iran. So when Midnight Hammer, in the lead up to it, we assess that, hey, even if we did these strikes, the Israelis were going to come right back to us after a couple

months and say, no, no, now is the time for us to do regime change. And that's exactly what happened. The difference is we had robust debates in the lead up to Midnight Hammer. After Midnight Hammer, President Trump's decision-making circle was very, very tight. And that's his prerogative, he can do that. However, he had all pro-Israel Hawks, like really in his ear, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and then on the outside, again, the media echo chamber, knowing that President Trump was watching Fox News, knowing what media he was consuming, and they're all saying the same thing, Iran can't have any enrichment, which basically put us on this collision course towards a conflict. I think the Israelis once again got nervous about a month ago because they knew

that Whitkoff and Kushner and others in the administration were actively engaging with the Iranians to get a deal. And that's why the Israelis launched their attack, knowing they could force our hands. And that's why I think you saw Marker Rubio and others come out immediately and say, well, yeah, there was an imminent attack. And the imminent attack was the Israelis attacking the Iranians. And then we knew that they would retaliate back against us. Why would they retaliate against us? Why would the Iranians retaliate against us? Yes. If they know that the Israelis are the ones that hit them, why would they retaliate against us? because they know that basically we fund the Israelis, that Israel would not have the offensive capability without us.

The Israelis are very competent at conducting, I'd say, like, smaller, more clandestine intelligence type of assassinations. Very good at doing that. They don't need our help to do that. They don't need our help gathering very much intelligence. But for big military lifts that involve, you know, deploying strike packages several thousand miles,

they need our help for that. And troops. And also... They want us to die for them. In order for them to commit that air power to go strike Iran, they're leaving some of their airspace vulnerable. So they need us to back them up in that regard as well. So without us providing the defense and the offensive capability, Israel can't do it. Now, Iran in the lead up to the 12-day war, during the 12-day war and after Midnight Hammer,

they observed the escalatory ladder very, very carefully. They didn't have their proxies attack us, and they also didn't attack us until midnight hammer. So they let the Israeli strike them throughout the entire 12-day war. and they didn't target any of our bases in the region. And then after Midnight Hammer, they shot back an equal amount of missiles at like the empty sector of one of the bases on Qatar in Qatar as we dropped bombs inside of Iran. So I think this next iteration they said, we're not going to do the escalatory ladder. If you guys come after us this time, because they knew that the Israelis were going for a regime change. They were going to try to take out the Supreme Leader.

And that's what led them to say, if you guys are going to do this, then we are going to retaliate with the full. for us because they didn't want to get pushed around again. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up, spring activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year. It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning. That's where Iexel comes in. I Excel is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork, from math and reading to writing and science.

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out there at the best price. And where did that intelligence come from, but didn't come from us? The intelligence about them having about enriching uranium. It wasn't even, it wasn't even intelligence. It was literally just talking points. I mean, I may, I don't even think it was portrayed as intelligence because this is what the Israelis, they're very good at- You're fucking serious? The Israelis are very good at doing this. The Israelis will come and they will have engagements with our intelligence services, with our diplomats, and they will give

information. And they will say something like, well, this isn't an intelligence channels yet. Because as you know, we formally share intelligence with the Israelis, but that makes this way through our own checks. And it's not a perfect system, but it's at least a system. And they'll say, hey, this isn't an intelligence channels yet. And then we'll go back and we'll check it to see if it's actually an intelligence channels. And a lot of times it's not. And that's the way this enrichment talking point was really, really, was really, really spun. Because they just basically said, no, no, America's policy has always been no enrichment. And I went back and I looked and people can fact check me. The only American official who ever said America's policy is zero enrichment

was Mike Pompeo in the first Trump administration. So the Israelis in this Trump administration came and they were basically like, here's President Trump's policy. It's from his last administration. And he contained Iran. This is it. This is the policy. And they echoed it over and over and over again, whereas all President Trump had said was no nuclear weapon. And so to short circuit the agreement essentially that the Supreme Leader and Trump had that got them in a negotiating table, the Israelis moved the red line by basically having their surrogates, their official government interactions, but then also the media echo that. It's a very clever, pretty sophisticated plan, but they got it done through repetition. You got a lot of flack for something that you said on my show

the last time you were here about. I think I think he said that we'll roll the clip right now, but I believe he said that Iran's. They've attacked us over 150 times using proxies. And people are calling you a flip-flopper. What do you have to say to that? If they look at the totality of everything I've ever said, I am neither an isolationist nor am I a hawk. On Iran, if their proxies attack us, we should hammer them.

I will debate anybody on the utility of killing Qasem Soleimani. President Trump was justified and he was correct and he was bold for killing Kossum-Sulmani. Solemani and his deputy Aboumani Mahondas. He was really bold in the fact that he took them off the battlefield, but then he didn't get suckered into what we're in right now, which is a regime change war in a massive country like Iran. So I've always been against us doing a prolonged kinetic strikes inside of Iran. When Iran shot ballistic missiles at our troops, I thought we would have been justified to basically counter battery and take out some of those ballistics. Now, right after the Iranian shot the ballistic missiles in retaliation for Soleimani at our troops at al-Assad,

they accidentally shot down that Ukrainian airliner and that basically ended the conflict right there but I have never been in favor of a regime change war inside of Iran if their proxies attack us if they attack us we hammer them back but again going back to the Iranian escalatory ladder if you look at how Iran has behaved

since President Trump basically killed Somani's and then since he came back into office they were very very deliberate about what they weren't going to what they were and what they were not going to do they didn't hit us until we hit them and then again again just for the record, I'm not a fan of the Iranians. I'm not a fan of the Kuds Force.

Like, I fought them. You fought them. They've killed friends of ours. But at some point, we do have to find a way that we can de-escalate these situations and move on. The default answer can't always be, well, we're going to do another regime change war and get sucked into this place for 20 plus years. That's my beef. I mean, the way I look at it is you got in there. You have access to a lot more information and you changed your mind.

And yeah, you're right. you know, they did, they were, I think they were in charge, they, they, they were the ones that developed the EFP bomb too, correct, that killed a shit ton of our friends. Yeah. But I think we both agree we shouldn't have been in the Iraq War. We should have. And then also just in terms of being, being effective, if our goal is to stop the Iranians from doing things like that, I argued, I've argued this for quite a while, we would only strengthen the hardliners in Iran. We would only strengthen the Kuds force,

the IRC, and the hardline Ayatollahs if we go in there and try and take them out. the basic rally around the flag effect. And I think we've done that. I mean, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that we killed, not a great guy, probably a bad guy, but by killing him, we basically said the next guy who's in charge, he's going to say, we're not going to have a prohibition on developing nuclear weapons. And if we end up killing him, too, and we end up killing some of the other folks that are more moderate, they're not going to be replaced by like a mini Thomas Jefferson. They're going to be replaced by more and more hardliners. There's always been a tension in Iran between the clerics and between the IRGC. And the IRGC, it's full of

pithetters, man. I mean, it's the guys who fought the Iraq around war. They fought us in Iraq. They fought against the Israelis in Lebanon with Hezbollah. So if we give these guys the ability to basically say, hey, don't listen to the moderates. Our job is to fight the Americans. It's to fight the Israelis. Then this is going to get harder and harder. There's going to be more terrorism. It's going to be more blood. And then basically the only recipe for getting out of this is going to be more and more continued war. though you've got the Straits of Hormoos as a choke point for major world energy. So this is going to become, it already has become a major geostrategic issue and a major issue

on the world economy. That's like 20 to 25% of the world's oil comes out of there. Everybody's pissed at us. Exactly. You know, back to the, back to the Iranian proxies and them killing U.S. service members in Iraq and in Afghanistan as well. That's not why we're there, though. You know, and so I see everybody.

And they're talking about the hostages, you know, back in the day. They're talking about how they, and they're clipping you on my show. But that's not why we're there. You know, you can scrounge around and find all kinds of justifications on why we would be starting a war with Iran. But none of that relevant stuff is the reason that we're there. And it hasn't been stated either by anybody but just fucking internet trolls. If we wanted to clean the deck on Iranian proxies that were out. of Iran or even inside of Iran, fine, do it. Do limited strikes. That's fine. The Israelis are very

competent. I mean, they've killed many Hamas. They've killed at least one Hamas leader inside of Tehran. They've killed how many members of Hezbollah decapitated them with the pagers. Operations like that are pragmatic. They make sense. They're limited in their scope. And they target exactly where we need to target. Again, back to the policy of the first Trump administration, President Trump would use force where required. But then, like, no other president I've seen. he would apply other leverage that only America has in terms of economic power and in terms of diplomacy. So after he kills Soleimani Mahanus, he goes and he slaps maximum pressure sanctions on Iran that makes the economic life in Iran very, very challenging.

That results in waves and waves of protests that we were seeing. Back in January, just not that long ago, we saw Iranians out on the streets protesting against the current regime because of the cost of living. Now, the Iranian, the regime knows that their own people could, overthrow them if they're not happy, especially, you know, with just how expensive it is and challenging it is to live. That organic protest movement was already happening, but it was happening in large part because of the economic pressure that President Trump had put on them. Now, if you want to ruin all that, you go as an outsider with the Israelis and you strike them because then everyone is going to rally around the flag. That's why we're not seeing any protests.

That's why even the Kurds have said, hey, we don't want to be part of any kind of regime change right now. working against it. I've heard rumors that we wanted the Kurds to back us in this. My answer to that is, why the fuck would the Kurds back us in this? We abandoned them in Iraq. They got fucking slaughtered when we did that. We just abandoned them about a month ago in Syria. I got buddies over at Fifth Group that were complaining about it.

And they, I mean, they fought with them. Yeah. And we fucking abandoned them again. and now they're getting slaughtered in fucking Syria. And then we ask them, the U.S. has a, I mean, we have a pattern. And that's what the pattern is. We come in, we pretend like we're your friend, we get what we need, and then we fucking abandon you and they slaughter your ass.

And we do nothing. Happened in Afghanistan, happened to the Kurds twice in Iraq and in Syria. One, just a couple of months ago, the Syrian, one just a couple of months ago. Now we're already back asking them. Like, of course they're going to fucking say, fuck you. Yeah, I think that was, I think that was the Israelis trying to like, basically use a media campaign to will that into existence. I don't know if that was ever a very real thing. But again, if our goal is to get rid of the Ayatollah is to get rid of that government, the last thing that we should have ever done was strike them. Because now, I mean, the Persians

have their pride. I mean, it's not that hard to imagine to put ourselves in their shoes. Like, None of us, most people probably watching this show or me or you, we didn't like Joe Biden. But if a foreigner would have attacked America, hey man, like, I'm going to saddle up and I'm going to defend my country. I don't think they're that much different than we are. And we're seeing that right now. There's a massive rally around the flag factor happening inside of Iran. And again, we're only going to get more and more hardliners now.

Let's talk about the strategy. Yeah. What is the strategy? What are we doing? Well, right now this is there a strategy? Well, the problem is. we have a drastically different strategic goal than the Israelis do. So we will say that Israel is our ally in this.

They're basically our co-equal in this. People like me will say, actually, we're not really even co-equals. They're leading because we're having to react to them. But either way, we're basically joined at the hip with the Israelis. Now, the problem is they have a much different strategic goal and a much, I'd say, higher threshold than tolerance for chaos and bloodshed than we do. Now, we have stated that our strategic goal you'll hear Secretary Higsev rattled these off at his morning briefings that he gives to the media. It's to destroy the Iranian Navy, to destroy the IRGC, to destroy their ballistic missile capability, to destroy all their enrichment. So we kind of have a checklist of like things that we want to bomb, essentially, to take off the battlefield.

That's about as far as we've gone with stating what our strategic goal is, which I think is a big problem that we have with the GWAT is we never really said what our strategic goal was. obviously there was get bin Laden and make sure the homeland isn't attacked. But I just remember being in Iraq, being like, what is the, what's the goal here? Like we're building a government. So same thing. We didn't really learn that lesson. We haven't stated our strategic goal. The Israelis, as critical as I am of our relationship with the Israelis, the Israelis have a very clear strategic goal.

And that is to take out this regime, lock, stock, and barrel. That's to get rid of the Ayatollahs, the clerical class that rules over. And then also the IRGC, which is a huge lift. It's a big country. Those institutions are massive. They've got a lot of support. but that's the Israelis goal. Now, the Israelis don't really care necessarily

if that happens in Iran then slips into chaos and the Straits of Hormuz remains inflamed and there's a migration crisis and there's an ongoing war. The Israelis don't care about that. They care that the IRGC and the Ayatollahs can no longer fund their proxies or cause them problems inside of Israel.

So again, you've got us footing the bill, doing the majority of the combat, doing the dying, doing the fighting. We have a very, very, very mercilessing, very murky strategic objective, whereas the Israelis are driving this. They're driving essentially our commitment of combat power. They're driving us having people lose their lives. They have a very clear strategic objective. And this is why I say the number one thing we have to do in order to get out of this is to restrain the Israelis and get our relationship with Israel straight. Otherwise,

it's all going to be for naught. And we're going to continue to get sucked in further and further. I mean, if we're attached hip to hip to hip with them, I mean, it's got to be the same goal, right? you would think, but it's not. Is it just not articulated, or is it really not? I feel like it's truly not. And the Israelis don't have a hard time articulating what their goal is. Oh, I mean us articulating. Yeah, so we just list off the tactical punch list of things we want to bomb to take out so the Iranians don't have anymore.

And to me, that's not a real strategic goal. You know, you had a, I want to bring out this up. You had a really good article in the Washington Post. I think it released today. But you were talking about some strategy here and that made me think, the potential deployment of U.S. ground troops makes me very nervous. Citing recent reporting that the president is considering Seizing Karg Island, Iran's main hub for oil experts. This is you quoted.

I just think that would be a disaster, Kent said, of deploying U.S. troops there. It would essentially be giving Iran a bunch of hostages on, an island that they could barrage with drones and missiles. Are you the only fucking person up there that's, that's thinking straight? Because that's exactly what would happen. You're putting U.S. service members in a fucking, in a fishbowl for Iran to kill. Because they're stranded on a fucking island. Yeah.

I mean, this is our, this is our strategy. Yeah. Who came up with this fucking strategy? Is that Trump? It sounds like Lindsey Graham. I mean, Lindsay Graham was on the Sunday shows yesterday, talking about how great it would be. It would be just like Iwo Jima.

I mean, just insanity. And I mean, I don't think the people who are pragmatic and are expressing their concerns, I don't believe they're being listened to. Now, obviously, the administration will push back and say, no, no, we're doing robust planning and we're hearing all voices, et cetera. But when I see ideas like that floated

and there's much worse ones out there as well, basically most of the formulas for putting boots in the ground inside of Iran are problematic, I guess is too late of a way to put it. They're bad plans. They've already stated they want us to do it. Of course. 100%. I mean, that would be handing Iran basically a strategic victory because once they get our troops

on the ground there, they're going to be able to kill some of them. We're going to take losses. And then we fall back into that cycle. Once we take losses somewhere, we say, oh, no, no, now we can't leave. We have to stay to have to have. avenge our fallen. It can't be all for nothing. We have to stay. We have to keep fighting. We saw this over and over again in the G-WAT. Every single time we talked about any kind of withdrawal in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was the same argument. We've lost too much here. There's still more that we could do.

So, I mean, in terms of the Krog Island, that makes me nervous because I have heard so many people like Lindsey Graham and others that are not military people, that are not in the Pentagon, that are not reading intelligence every day, talk about it very flippantly. Like, oh, we'll just take that island. We'll just take their oil. I don't know what tell you guys, like, it's not 2003 anymore. You can't just put guys there and they'll occupy it. Like, there's ballistics, there's drones. They would be sitting ducks in that area. And as a matter fact, like you said, the Iranians would probably be like, please take the island. We, you know, we'll roll out the red carpet for you guys. I mean, do I need to read your bio again? Why is he taking

advice from Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz and whoever else that's just career bureaucrats? This is the problem. And then you got a guy like you in there with tons of experience. in war, in intelligence. Yeah. And there's others, too. There's plenty of us in there that can give him much better advice. I just hope the president reflects

and I know he's mad at me. I hope he reflects and I hope he looks at the advisors he has around him currently that got him to the state that we're in right now because we're not in a good state. He knows that. And he needs to start listening to people that are going to give him better advice

that can give us a clear pathway out of this. Who are some people that would give him better advice? Other than yourself. Vice President, D. and I Gabbard and their teams, I think, are absolutely key. The vice president and the DNI. And the DNI, yeah. Yep. And there's good people at the Pentagon that can give you obvious.

So he's not taking advice from his own vice president. That I don't know. I wasn't at the vice president's level. I think they have a good relationship. I just, based on what I've seen and based on what we've seen in the public sphere, he has been taking more advice, obviously, from from Lindsey Graham, from Ted Cruz, from Mark Levin on TV, than he has been from, from, from people who may say, hey, sir. Mark Levin on TV. That's who is getting advice from fucking

in terms of how easy and great of an idea this will be. I mean, so the media ecosystem, they're not giving them tactical military advice, but they were, I believe, in my opinion, a big part of echoing the Israeli talking points about no enrichment. You have to strike now. If you strike now, you'll be a hero. There was also this false narrative basically that said, like, hey, because the people were on the streets in January, if you take a couple strikes right now and you really hammer them, the rest is going to be easy. It's going to be a cakewalk. the people are going to rise up, they're going to overthrow the regime, they're going to love you, they're going to cut a deal. It's going to be quick and easy like Venezuela was.

I think Venezuela did a lot to give us some false confidence in how quick and easy a regime change, regime modification, whatever you want to call it, can be. So people like Levin, people on, Fox, New York Post, New York Times, et cetera, a lot of those talking heads, you know, coincidentally, not so coincidentally, a lot of them were the same people who talked us into the Iraq War, convinced him how quick and easy this would be. But I mean, to your point, I think if he took some more advice from vice president, from D&I Gabbard and their teams, I think we'd be in a much better spot. And I think we'd be able to carve our way out of this mess.

Man, wow. How many troops do we have over there right now waiting? Is it 2,500 Marines on the new? I don't know. I mean, I see what you see on the news. I'm disconnected from all that. How many is Israel said? Far less than us.

Most their military operations are taking place in Lebanon. They're doing a lot of air. Air support and power projection via air, which is heavily funded by us. Are they talking about sending ground force? If they could, it be tiny. They just don't have, I mean... Oh, so we'll do it. So we'll do it.

We'll do it. We would have to do it, yeah, 100%. I mean, they might... We'll do it for them. They could do a commando rate or something, you know. That'd be about it. But in terms of any kind of meaningful hold ground, even for a limited amount of time,

that would have to be American boots. Oh, okay. That's kind of what I thought. But, you know, I'm getting angry, Joe. I can tell. I hear you, man. I hear you. I hear you.

I hear you. But it's just no new wars. No new wars. It just echoes in my head all day long. Yeah. And here we are. Here we are. Right back at war.

Completely avoidable. Completely avoidable. And I pray, again, he listens to some of the voices that they can get him out of this. I think there's still time, but this is very bad, and this could get worse. And I think platforms of yours are important

because people like you put big podcasts, I think you guys brought a lot of people out to vote for President Trump. And I think it's really important that all the people that are watching this show and all the other podcasts call their senators, call their representatives, make their voice heard

because there is, again, that media ecosystem that kind of exists, oddly in the White House, we've got to penetrate through that. They were listening during the campaign and I think they'll listen again if people take this as a call to action. I mean, so we're talking about war strategy a little bit here. What is the rest of the world's pulse on this? Is anybody other than Israel encouraging us to hit Iran? I doubt it. I strongly doubt it. I mean, China gets like, not that China's our front. China's not our front.

They get like 75% of their fucking oil from the straight or her moves. They're still getting it. The only difference is they're selling the transactions in Yuan. And so I think China may like this because obviously we've taken our eyes off the Pacific for people who care about Taiwan. The Pacific is truly our border. We're a Pacific power. I think a lot of that has kind of gone by the wayside because you had to move so much combat power into. into CINCOM. So I'm sure China's happy with it. Russia, too, we've taken our eyes off of

getting a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. Because there is scarcity now, we've created scarcity by it's taking place in the Straits of Hermuz with the energy sector, Russian oil, Russian gas, all that is going to be worth more on the market now to fund their war. So I think our major competitors, Russia and China, I would say they're probably pretty happy about this, but all of our regional allies, I think, are probably pretty furious about it. And China's becoming more aggressive towards Taiwan since we started this. Right. Right.

And then two, in terms of like... Now, that's a real fucking threat. That's a real threat. And then... They take those chip plants. That's a real fucking threat. They will win the AI race like that. It is.

And yeah. And it was always debatable... We're going after fake nuclear weapons. It was always debatable if we could defend it before. But now, with all the combat power pushed into CENTCOM, that's a huge issue. Another major issue is the strength. of the dollar. The dollar's already been weakened so much because of our deficit spending. We can deficit spend because we're the world's reserve currency holder. And a lot of that strength comes

from the petro dollar, that any money that gets bought from the GCC, or any oil that's bought from the GCC, you've got to sell the transaction in dollars. China's already kind of short-circ. And then they reinvest it in our stock market. Right, right. But so if you want to keep that system going, which I'm not sure if it's the best system, but we should at least deliberately move away from it if we're going to do it. It shouldn't disappear over the course of a month because of a war because the straits being choked off. Iran knows this. They know that if they choke off the straits and they only let, you know, Chinese ships, et cetera, come through and they settle the transaction in another currency that they're eroding away at the petro dollar. And we also

need the GCC to be on board, all the Gulf cooperation countries in the region, they've got to be on board with the petro dollar too. The reason why they went with the petro dollars because we provided their security guarantees. Well, how are the security guarantees now? We can't defend them against what's taking place. We can't defend them from Iranian ballistics, Iranian drones. They know full well that the war was launched by Israel, and now they're suffering the consequence. So all of a sudden, we're not the best ally. So how long do we expect them to continue to settle their transactions in the dollar? So the ramifications of this conflict, I think, are massive. What about Europe? I mean, when the facility in Qatar got hit, I mean, they're now having to renegotiate all their contracts with China,

Italy, there was a handful of European countries that did get the majority of their oil from there. Now they have to renegotiate because they're going to default on the contract. Yeah. There's only one country that gains in this, and that's Israel. That's just the bottom line. Is there anything that we gain? Do we gain anything at all by doing this? I don't believe so.

I mean, my critics would say, no, we're finally once and for all taking out the Iranian regime. Again, for all the reasons I previously outlined, I just disagree with that. And again, we don't seem to have a strategy that's working. that direction minus the punch list of things that were bombing. Well, Joe, I want to take a break here real quick, but before we do, I saw Trump's speech this morning about you, too, he's poking fun that you lost, that she lost your congressional run. So I pulled some stats.

So I'm poking fun at you this morning about losing in Washington, losing your Congress race. Trump actually lost there in the last presidential election by a 17% margin himself. You only lost by a 3.8% margin. Who's the fucking loser? All right, let's take a break. Aging is inevitable. And if you're anything like me, you feel it a little more every year.

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dot com slash sRS and use code shan for 20% off your order take care of your body it's the only one you've got hi i'm sarah adams the host of vigilance elites the watch floor where we highlight what matters it became a permissive state explain to you why it matters and then aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play tariffs hostile intelligence agencies Organized crime, not everything is urgent, but this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know. All right, Joe, I know we were going to move on about strategy from the Epstein War. I mean the Iran War, but I got a couple more questions for you. So one, what is Rubio doing in all this?

I'm not sure. I mean, I think he's doing the best he can to give the president options. I mean, he came out right away, and I think it was pretty honest when he said we had to attack otherwise he's really going to. What are the other options that he's given? Are you aware of those? I'm not. No, I don't know. Is he for this?

That I don't know, honestly. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of strategy. There's a lot of stuff floating around about strategy attacking their infrastructure, taking away the fertilizer for their food, creating famines, hitting their water supply, starving them of water. I mean, hitting their energy, great. Is there any validity to that? I'm sure it was looked at because we look at everything,

but that I don't know. The only strategy... Those are innocent people. The only strategy I've seen is the punch list of military targets. And I don't... I still believe the U.S. military would not deliberately target

civilian infrastructure in that way. You don't think we would do that? I don't think we would. I just, based on my experience in the military, I don't think that we would. now will the Israelis this is the problem this is the problem that we have

being partnered with someone who has different values than we do look the Israelis believe this is existential the Israelis we've seen what the Israelis but what they did in Gaza like they have a different 20,000 kids

they have a whole different way of fighting wars than we do they fight total war they fight very very biblical wars we do not. I mean, in all honesty, they fight a war how you should fight a fucking war.

Precisely. So... If you want to win. Like, we... We don't fight like we want to win. That's not in our interest because at the end of the day, like, if you're going to do that,

then you're going to occupy the land, you're going to fully take the land. We're not going to do that. We've never been a very good occupying army. America has not been a good occupying army. I don't think Americans have the colonial mentality. I don't think we have the total war mentality. I'm glad that we don't.

However, if, we're going to be, again, it goes back to are we going to be partnering with the Israelis and attempt to pretend that we can have a different strategic goal, but then also a different appetite for how a war is conducted. Like at some point we should just say there's certain things we can partner with the Israelis on, like limited strike counterterrorism operations, absolutely. But when it comes to fighting and to try and take over and quell and dominate an entire population, we cannot be joined at the hip with the Israelis just due to the different strategic goals, but then also just a different value system.

Is there any way at all to differentiate that, to have our goal and their goal and be in this together? It seems one of the same to me. I don't believe so, but we're paying for the Israelis. We're paying for everything that they're doing. And so we are the dominant one in this relationship. We need to assert ourselves as such. I honestly, and I know I've gotten a lot of crap and people have said, oh, you're anti-Semitic, whatever.

I've got no issue with the Israelis. They're pursuing their objectives. I have an issue with our reaction to the Israelis. Like our government should not be, our action should not be directed by a foreign government. That's my biggest issue. You have an, yeah, you have, you're upset because we are under their influence. Yes, exactly. And, you know, in your resignation letter, you had talked about how the Iraq war, Syria,

yep. That was because we were under their influence too. And I want to ask you, how were we under their influence in Syria? So I think the war in Syria. wouldn't have happened if the Iraq war wouldn't have happened. So the Iraq war was driven, obviously, by the neo-conservative movement here in America, military industrial complex, but a big part of that was also the Israeli lobby. Benjamin Netanyahu at the time, who had just gotten done being the Israeli prime minister, I think he was still in government. He was like the finance minister.

He came and he aggressively lobbied and testified in the House and in the Senate that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. So he helped launder that narrative that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction in conjunction with the military industrial complex and neoconservatives to say that we had to go in and we had to take away the nuclear weapons. You also had others in like the think tank realm, the same thing, the media echo chamber who was saying that Saddam was linked to Al-Qaeda and to 9-11 potentially. So they laundered those talking points as well. Now Benjamin Netanyahu and the Lakud party really wanted us to go in and take out Saddam

so that they could have basically a launching pad for operations in. into Iraq and then also into Syria. They wanted us to do the heavy lifting so that they could eventually get their goal of taking out Assad, who was supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, and then also taking out Iran. So that's why they supported the war in Iraq. The prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, initially said,

no, I don't support this. I want America to focus on taking out Iran first, but then eventually he got on board. So you basically had both major political parties inside of Israel pushing for the war in Iraq. The Israelis also wanted access to Iraq's oil supply so that they could get a pipeline of oil coming out of Iraq and directly into Israel, circumventing Syria because they didn't want to go through Syria because Assad was supporting the Iranians and supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. So once we got into Iraq and got into that quagmire, we, the U.S. government screwed things up so badly that we basically handed over Iraq, as you know, to Iranian-backed. Shias that were there. So by the time we were done in Iraq, Iran pretty much controlled Iraq through

their proxies, helped them circumvent sanctions, made Iran even stronger. So then you had the Shia crescent. You basically had a unification of Tehran, Baghdad, in Damascus, forming that crescent, that land bridge, Iranian supplies, going right into Israel's backyard. So the Israelis at the end of the Iraq war, we're like, no, no, this is not going to work at all. We have to break this up. We have to go war in Syria. We have to take down Assad. Arab Spring happened. There was some energy from the people. I think it was somewhat organic. But then in short order, we came in and we said, we're going to work with the Israelis, but we're also going to have to work heavily with the Sunni population on the ground in Syria to create an uprising. And that's where ISIS came from. We worked directly with

Al-Qaeda. Hillary Clinton's emails confirmed this. The operations that we were doing to support the so-called free Syrian army. And there were some moderates there, but the most effective guys initially were al-Qaeda and then eventually ISIS. Now, obviously, ISIS got out of control and they started plotting attacks in Europe. They started plotting attacks in America. They took over large swaths of Iraq. So we then had to go back and put out once again the brush fire that we had started and go after ISIS. And that's where I lost my late wife. But Israel was the driving factor in that. We took down Saddam, who was a strong man against Israel. We then had to go in and take out Assad, who was a strong man against Israel as well. And now this is the third phase.

We're going now into Iran to take out that strong government for Israel. And we, who did we put in charge of Syria? Oh, we handed that whole, well, again, we screwed the whole thing up so much. We handed it to a leader of fucking al-Qaeda. Yep. He was in ISIS initially. He was in Iraq, fighting against us. We had him in jail, joined ISIS, broke off from ISIS, hand-selected by bin Laden's right-hand man, I'm in Zawahiri, to lead Nusra. And then they rebranded. And this is the number one way to fool Americans as a Giotis is just put on a suit and get a good PR company. And then apparently we'll just believe whatever you say. There's videos of this guy holding people's heads that he cut off. Yeah, he's, I mean, he's the thought. He's shaking. He's a brutal terrorist. He's a brutal terrorist. Yeah, horrible advice. Yep. And so what the fuck are we doing? Exactly. What are we doing?

Exactly. President Trump at the beginning, again, this is where Trump, this guy's inviting a fucking terrorist into our house. In the first Trump administration, he had Syria right. He said, we're going to go in, we're going to take out the caliphate because it posed the threat to us, and then we're going to get out. And this is why I supported President Trump, even after losing Shannon, because he was trying to get our troops out. The military was fighting him. And then when Assad fell in December, right before President Trump even took office, when Assad fell in Jalani, whatever HTS took over Syria, President Trump put out of truth. You can still probably pull it up where he says, whatever happens. in Syria, it's not our business. I always said it was a bad idea. I don't want to be involved in

in. That was actually the right approach because it was too late for us to go back in and, you know, fight the new government, etc. The best thing that we could have done is back off, let the Turks, let the Israelis, let our regional partners kind of take lead there. But instead, we went all in with the Shara government. We embraced them and now we're pretending they're part of like the D-IS coalition and it's just, it's an entire mess. Like look, the Middle East basically, and again, President Trump used to understand this. The Middle East is a place where you can just get involved in these never-ending quagmire's and you start one fire to put out another and you never fully extricate yourself and at the end of the equation there's

never a clear benefit for the American people and that's that's gotten us to this state that we're in right now and we have to stop that what about the iAEA inspections we were going in there and inspecting all these facilities in Iran correct and then trump cut that oh yeah it's part of in his first administration. Right, as part of the getting rid of the JCPOA. Why would we do that? I think the idea with the JCPOA was it gave Iran access. And I partially agree with this.

It gave Iran access to more capital with sanctions circumvention. That was the whole famous. Initially, Obama unfroze a bunch of the assets that we had frozen, and that's why we flew over the pallets of cash that everyone talks about so frequently. And then as part of throwing out the JCPOA, we got rid of the inspections, and there was, because when they put in the inspectors, there were some sanctions relief that came there

by getting rid of the JCPOA and slapping the sanctions back on them, that made it more challenging for the inspectors to get back into the Iranian sites. Again, though, like Trump had used his leverage. He killed Soleimani. We were in a really good place. At the beginning of this administration,

President Trump was in a great spot with Iran. Him and the Supreme Leader both agreed. No nukes. We need to have a discussion about enrichment. We need to have a discussion about how that's going to be supervised and checked. But this was a discussion that could have been worked out by diplomats sitting at a table

as opposed to a massive military conflict. And Iran, and again, I'm no fan of Iran. They were restraining their proxies. They even restrained their proxies throughout the first iteration of the 12-day war. So, again, I go back to why are we doing what we're doing right now? Look at the ramifications. Look at how little we're gaining from this.

And again, all roads go back to Israel is the benefactor in all of this. And we've got to get that relationship to a place where it actually benefits us and not just them. As far as these proxies, I mean, you know Sarah Adams, correct? I mean, she's been talking about the sleeper cells in the U.S. for probably two years now, maybe longer. Yeah. You know, it says there's thousands. Yeah. Thousands of terrorist and sleeper cells all around the country.

Now, how are we going to know if Iran is the one that activated them? Right. Or were they just inspired by events that are over there? So I testified publicly in December that we at NCTC had identified 18,000 known suspected terrorists who had access to America. The more we dug into the data of the last four years, the more I realized we have no idea who was in our country. Just because there was no border, the CBP1 app, and the ability for people to come into the country, undetected, but then later apply for a benefit

knowing they'd get a parole status, which gives them a legal status in America, which we're still caught up in the courts and fighting the courts with. We just simply don't know. At the beginning of this war, we were looking at other data sets of people who could have come from either Iran or Lebanon, Iraq,

countries that have large Shia populations. And again, the data was, to me, it was as murky as the numbers of who came into the border. Like, it just, the one consistent factor I kept coming away with, or one takeaway I kept coming away with, was that we have no idea who is in our country right now. And that is incredibly dangerous. So again, I think we should be focusing the majority of our efforts on securing our homeland and making sure the people who came into our country in the last four years are located and we get them out. Now, sleeper cells, I think

a lot of people when they hear sleeper cells, they'll think like it's a handful of guys who are specifically trained and infiltrated to conduct an attack at a certain time. That could be taking place, I don't think that's the main threat. I think the main threat is people that have come here legally and illegally being inspired by media they consume or by seeing social media clips and then saying, now I'm going to conduct an attack as a lone actor, because that's even harder for us to pick up on, like cells when they infiltrate, they have to communicate with each other. The U.S. intelligence community and law enforcement, we're pretty good at infiltrating those cells and detecting them. It's not 100%. It could still happen. But when it's a lone actor and it's someone who's just inspired

to take action based on the fact that they shouldn't even be in our country in the first place and they see some media and they take action then that's hard for us to actually get ahead up and stop until it's too late and at the beginning of this conflict we've already seen several attacks there's a guy down in Texas who went in the bar and shot up several people I think killed three people shut several more you know he had an Iran t-shirt on um he said ODU too old-doney university exactly exactly right there too and then how do you know that they So how do you know they're, they need to communicate in that we would pick that up? Because it's been reported by Sarah and her counterparts that they are only communicating back to HQ in Afghanistan through couriers.

And that they have, they're totally isolated that you don't know each other. So the only way they have to communicate is through couriers, which we would not pick that up. That's definitely impossible too. Yeah. That's certainly impossible. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't rule it out. again, it goes back to like the border was open for four years. So it's kind of like if you and I wanted to attack our adversaries and left their border open for four years, like how creative could we get? And that's the opportunity that we gave all of our enemies. So when people would say, well, how many bad guys do you think are in the country? They're like, like, seriously, what's the number? I'm like, I don't know. I'll tell you the truth. I'll tell you the truth is that the more we dig through the data, the more we realize we really truly don't know. And then people would say, well, do you think it's sleeper cells? Do you think it's this, that, or the other thing? It's like, well, honestly, again,

We kind of go back to the only thing we created for the last four years under the previous administration was a massive opportunity for terrorists to exploit our country and to kill people here. If they were to attack with a proxy, would you be 100% confident that it was them? If I ran or, I mean, at this point, what we've seen more of is we've seen younger people, some of whom were born here, conduct these attacks and they were just inspired by some of them. that they saw. And then a lot of them, too, I know Sarah has her theory of the case. I think the bigger threat, based on what we saw last year, we saw the terrorist attacks we saw here in America, most of those people were inspired by media content they had consumed coming out of Gaza, the Gaza conflict, and they cited Gaza as being a driver pushing them towards violence. So, yeah, obviously, if we intercepted a cell of Iranians that, you know,

we could prove they had ties back to Iran, then yeah, then absolutely we'd have to hold them accountable for that. I mean, there are other motivations for this as well to get us all riled up. Oh, for sure. 100%. Do you think that's a possibility? I think it's, I think the, I think war always presents an opportunity for people to exploit to further their objectives.

So if you want to sell more of surveillance state, more infringements upon our civil liberties, now is the time to do it. Because like I just described, it's a very scary security environment. You can legitimately say like, hey, we don't know who's in our borders. Terrorists could attack because what's taking place in the Middle East. There's been a massive decline in law and order in general in our cities. So therefore, we need take your pick. What kind of intrusions on our civil liberties?

It becomes easier. I mean, the more people are scared of what's happening, the easier that is to sell. So I definitely think there's going to be elements of the government, big tech. will exploit this chaos. You're being accused of leaking classified information. Yeah. What classified information did you leak? It's a good question.

I didn't leak any. I didn't leak any classified information. I had my full security clearance until last week when I walked out the door. I had full access to everything. So my security clearance was never suspended, never pulled. I think most of these leak allegations are just a media narrative to take away from the conversation that you and I are having. The first leak accusation surfaced right as I was going live with Tucker.

So they were just trying to take the wind out of our, out of my sales, I think, a little bit by saying, no, you know, don't listen to this guy's leaker. I mean, that's what, that's, that's what I think. Yeah. It seems very reactionary to me. When did the investigation start? Are you aware? I'm not, I don't think there is an investigation. There isn't an investigation.

No one, no one, no one has come to me and said you're being investigated. The only, the only, the only proof there of there being an investigation is someone in the government leaking to the media saying that Kent's under. investigation for being a leaker. So they had to leak that I'm a leaker. Another leaker. Right, exactly. That's why, like, I mean, I take it seriously. The FBI has ruined innocent people's lives, like General Flynn with an accusation before. So I take it seriously. I'm confident I didn't leak any classified information. But at the same time, like, we kind of know what the game is here. And if they really were going to investigate me, they would come to me and say, hey, you're being investigated or we're going to ask you some questions, et cetera. If they really were going to

investigate me too, I don't think they would tip their hand ahead of time by leaking it. That doesn't work out in their advantage at all. So I think it's just a media. If they do, you were leaking, why wouldn't they have fired you and then continued on with the investigation? They were just going to wait for your resignation. Right. They at least would have pulled my clearance. He's going to resign soon. Don't fire him. He's, we know he's leaking classified information, but just he's going to be gone soon. Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. What's going on with the Butler assassination attempt? So, um... Are we looking at?

looking into that? Yeah. I think there's basically two schools of thought as to what's taking place right now and how we got in the situation with Iran that, you know, Trump should know better, and I think he does know better. I just gave you that more than likely, I think he just got a lot of bad information. There's a much smaller chance, but I think it can't be ignored the fact that there was several assassination attempts against President Trump that really haven't fully been explained, one of which, so Butler itself, no one is saying is linked to the FBI, but two days before the Butler assassination attempt, we arrested a guy named Asif Mershant. He was just prosecuted and I think going to jail. We arrested him for being recruited by Iran to come here and attempt to assassinate President Trump to avenge the death, to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani. Mershant had a FBI informant that was working with him. Mershant didn't know he was an FBI informant, obviously. And they basically set up a scheme to conduct an assassination against President Trump using a sniper. They arrest Mershant and then two days later a sniper tries to kill Trump at Butler.

I wanted to look for potential linkage between those events, was completely shut off and blocked from that. You were? No, NCTC was. The National Counterterrorism Center. Why would they cut you off? That seems like definitely possible terrorism, especially considering the first one was supposedly. said by Iran. Certainly. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Again, we were told, hey, the Merchant trial is ongoing, so you can't look into any of the information. You can look at a little bit of the information,

but we can't really do much there. But my question was always, you know, is there any linkage between anyone that Merchant talked to and the people who were there at Butler and Crooks? You know, because we can say all day long, they're not linked, but are we sure that we had everything that Merchant was doing under control? Is there any linkage between those two events? Under from from my vantage point, I didn't see that investigation being done very thoroughly. I think this matters. Who was conducting that investigation? That was all the FBI.

Oh, the FBI. Yeah. I think this matters in the terms of what we're talking about because you had Butler, you had the other assassination attempt at West Palm Beach. And then you had, once Trump came into office, you had several breaches of his security perimeter. You had the famous stoppage of the escalator at the UN. You had when he went out to dinner, there was the table of code pink protesters who sat, down next to them. And then you had the police officer, who I think is probably a good patriotic

American, but he was armed. He wasn't part of the president's detail. Come up and shake President Trump's hand. So basically circumventing the secret service. And then you had the assassinations of Charlie Kirk. And Charlie was one of the most vocal advocates against a regime change war inside of Iran. And he was advocating heavily that we change our stance in regards to our relationship with Israel. He was in the White House lobbying President Trump to not attack Iran in the lead up to the 12-day war. So Charlie would have been very, very much against what was going on, what's going on right now. He's then killed in September. And so I think it's irresponsible for us not to look at all of these things on a broader timeline and see where they fit into what's taking place right now.

Are you saying that you don't think that the kid that's been propped up to have killed Charlie is the guy? I'm not saying that at all. I mean, that kid, his fingerprints are on the gun. That case is going to be made. What I do know is that NCTC was investigating any foreign linkage, not necessarily just to the suspect, to Robinson, but any foreign linkage that could have taken place regarding that case. And again, we were stopped really early on from thoroughly investigating. and all that I can say is that we had more foreign connections.

I'm not saying a foreign government, but I'm saying foreign connections to look into, to thoroughly do our due diligence from an investigatory standpoint, that that, in my opinion, was not done. Now, the FBI will tell you, we got our guy, he turned himself in, his fingerprints are on the gun. There's been some debate over whether or not he confessed. I guess we'll see when he goes to court. But now that the case is being handled 100% by Utah.

And again, considering how prominent Charlie Kirk was, I think it's important that we continue that investigation and that every angle is looked into and a complete investigation actually takes place. And from what I saw, that did not happen. So this is going to wind up just like JFK? I hope not. I hope not. I think we have the ability to really look into every aspect of it no matter what the truth is. And no matter where that leads us. And again, like, look, people are saying, like, why are you speaking cryptically?

I can't speculate. I can only tell you what I know. And the only thing I know for sure is that our due diligence was not done on looking at the foreign links. The rest of the case can be rock solid. If they've got Tyler Robinson. Are you saying there are foreign links? There's foreign connections we need to look into. What are those connections?

That I can't get into because that's going to, that's all tied up inside of classified channels, essentially. But there was more work we needed to do. And now I'm not saying, like, you know how an investigation works. You chase down 99 leads and 100 leads and 99 of them are BS and you get one good one. So even the things that I know of that I don't want to speculate about half of them could be half, 75%, 90% of them could be trash leads. But there's stuff that we need to look down. Charlie was a very influential figure. He traveled the world.

He traveled the nation. There was a lot of people from all over the place looking and watching Charlie Kirk speak there. There was people speculating about what was going to happen to Charlie Kirk online ahead of time. So there's more work that we needed to do in regards to foreign linkage to the Kirk assassination. And I just don't understand why you wouldn't want to know, why you wouldn't conduct a full investigation on who tried to kill you if you're the president of the United States. Right.

I just, that does not compute in my brain. Right. Why would you not want to know? Especially after we were told for quite some time that Thomas Crooks was an enigma, We didn't know who he was. He's just this crazy kid. He had no online footprint. You know, we were told for a while that they couldn't get into his devices, that they were locked, couldn't get into his devices.

And then when they said they finally got into his device, the FBI finally said they got into his devices, they're like, no, there's nothing there. Well, fast forward a couple months and Tucker Carlson's investigative journalist finds a full online persona of this kid. He's communicating for other people. He's commenting on YouTube videos. He's interacting with people that are overseas. So there's more work there to be. done clearly. And there was a big rush to say, like, well, we shot the sniper. He's kind of an enigma. We don't know anything about him, but case closed. You know, cream at the body 10 days later.

Tucker's the one that came up with all that? Tucker's investigative journalist that he, that works on Tucker's team found Crooks' online persona. Yeah. And the FBI didn't. The FBI or the FBI didn't report it. I don't know what the case is. Or does Tulsi stand in all this stuff? She's obviously in a tough spot. So I don't want to say anything it's going to put her in a tougher spot than she's already in. She's doing the best that she can. How many people up there are against what we're doing? It's hard to put a number on it.

Look, I mean, you know how the government is. Maybe a percentage. Yeah. Most people that serve in the government, I've found, they want to make their boss happy, and they don't want any friction at work, and they want to salute and they want to move out. You know, I think that's where everybody's lost it.

100%. I agree. The fucking job is to protect. and serve the people of the United States. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And look, there's a lot of good patriots

that are still there who think that they're doing the right thing. And this is a dilemma that I had. I was like, well, do I stay here and do I soldier on and be a good soldier? And, you know, do I show up every day and, you know, do my darndest? And then if the big strategic picture gets messed up,

well, that's not really on me. You know, I did that for 20-plus years in the military and the agency and kind of see where that got us, right? When we knew better, see where that got us. And so, like I said, you know, 20-plus years ago, I'm going to promise to myself if I ever had the ability to speak out

and try to get us on a better path, I would do so. If my late wife hadn't gotten killed, if I hadn't been through the experiences I had been through, I wouldn't, I don't think have the clarity and the courage to do what I'm doing now. So I am sympathetic to people who are inside, who are still like, hey, I'm just a, you know, I'm just a guy, I'm not that important,

I'm trying to do my job, I'll do what I'm told. However, the people who came in, you know, with President Trump in key leadership positions that are a part of this movement and leading this movement, I think they've got to reflect on what we ran on, because this is not what we ran on. And they have to live with it. And so they can either make a decision to try and influence the situation from inside, but once they realize they can't influence that situation inside, then they have a choice to make. Do they stay and be complicit with it? Or do they leave and try and get us back on the right path.

In your mind, how do we get out of this thing? I mean, we're in it now with Iran. Yeah. We're in it. How does this end? How do we get out of this? What are the options? If we don't deal with the Israelis,

then this thing will just keep going. There might be fits and starts. Like maybe this five-day ceasefire will work. I'm a little skeptical. I'm hopeful. But unless we restrain the Israelis, and tell them like you're done. And if you continue to attack

and you continue to do things without telling us and asking us, without asking us first, we're paying for it, you're going to ask us first. Then we are going to negate our other part of the deal and our part of the deal says that we defend Israel. And we provide their Iron Dome system. We provide their air defense. We provide a lot of their defense.

We provide their Iron Dome. We don't even have a fucking iron Dome. We provide a lot of the funding for the Iron Dome, for sure. For sure. So I would say to the Israelis very bluntly, you're done going on the offense. We will tell you what operations you can conduct. If you disobey us and you don't run your operations by us that we're paying for, then we're going to start taking away features of your defense system to the point

where all you can do with your military basically is stay on the defense. That's the only way to restrain the Israelis, in my opinion. I think we're past the point of being able to have like, hey, nice conversations, like, hey, could you guys please not? Because every time we say, could you please not, the Israelis say, yeah, sure, that sounds good. And then they turn around and they conduct strikes that basically negate any kind of negotiation that we're trying to pursue. I mean, didn't Netanyahu literally just say that? Yeah, again.

With this statement I just wrote on. Again, as frustrating as people, as I get with the Israelis sometimes, they're not very subtle. Like, the Israelis are not doing a lot of, like, lying and BSing to us. Like, they're pretty upfront with what they're doing and what they plan to do. So I would take them at their word and I would just say, no, you're not because we're paying for all of this. And we have to restrain them. And I know a lot of people are going to be very, very frustrated when I say that because there are people who really like Israel. And I'm not saying, like, you cut off Israel, you know, you whatever. I'm not saying any of that. I'm saying you take away the resources that they have right now to go on the offense.

Make it so Israel could only defend themselves. That's fine. But they can't go on the offense anymore. Once we do that and once we restrain the Israelis, then I think we have a place where we can use our allies in the Gulf. We can use the Omanis, the Qatari's, et cetera, to get the Iranians to come to the table and come up with a way that we can reopen the Straits of Hormuz. I think we're going to need to say to the Iranians, okay, we need to lift sanctions on some of their oil. We have to give them something. So I think lifting the sanctions and letting them get a lot of their oil introduced back into the world market, I think that's actually a pretty good carrot to get them to the table. And that's also going to help lower the price at the pump and lower the – and get more oil and petrochemicals flowing for the fertilizer and everything else that the world needs in terms of energy.

But again, step one is restraining the Israelis. That's the only way I can see out of this. And look, we're going to have to make some concessions. We're going to say, hey, we'll work with whoever is there in Iran. we're going to have to give them red lines that might need to be enforced every now and again. Like your proxies will not attack us. You will stop attacking the Gulf countries.

Otherwise, this will continue. But at this point, they know we're pretty serious about using force. I think we have to show them now that we're serious about using diplomacy and getting to the table. What are the chances you think that'll happen? Every day that goes by, less and less.

Right now, again, look, I know you're frustrated to President Trump. I know probably a lot of your viewers are frustrated President Trump. I think if President Trump sits and thinks about where we are and how we got here, I think he'll understand that we're in a bad spot and we need to get out of it. And in order to get out of it, he needs to take drastic action. Now, that's where the good news is, and this is what gives me some hope. President Trump is good at taking drastic action.

He is decisive. He is unpredictable. But in terms of doing big things, that's the story of President Trump's life. He can do it. So I think other presidents in this situation, they wouldn't be able to rapidly extricate us from this. I think Trump can. He needs to listen to his core beliefs and he needs to listen to different advisors and he needs to have the courage to restrain the Israelis. Then I think he can do it.

It gets harder and harder every day that goes on, though. If he's got this five-day window that he's created for himself, he needs to use it and he needs to pursue it aggressively. At the end of that five-day window, I think it's going to be exponentially more difficult. I mean, what do you think? I mean, Iran's literally saying there are no negotiations going on. Right. What do you think? Do you think there are or do you think there are not? I'm sure we're trying. I'm sure we're trying. We have some people that I know are probably aggressively reaching out. Now, are they getting responses? I don't know. I just think that the Iranians, after us killing so many of the negotiators and so many of the leadership there. And then us, you know, basically saying after the 12, they were that like we use the negotiations as a ruse. I don't think that helps.

Because I think before, again, there was a tension inside of Iran where you had the clerics and you had some of the moderates that were saying like, okay, we won't make a nuclear bomb. We are interested in some engagement with the Americans. We would like a deal. But then you had the hardliners. You had the students of Qasem Soleimani who were like, uh-uh, absolutely not. Let's go on the offensive. Let's use our proxies to kill these guys.

Let's bleed them out of the Middle East. So right now, who's winning that argument inside Iran? I fear the hardliners are winning that argument inside of Iran because every Iranian leader that they target and they kill I mean Trump even said it today when he was at the plane side when he was plane side he was asked who are you talking with inside of Iran and he said I don't want to name them because then they might get killed

well they might get killed by the Israelis because the Israelis don't want us to have negotiation this is fucking crazy it's insane no no it's insane this is fucking crazy it's insane so the Iranians that he's not saying that because if he if he names a name the Israelis will kill them. I didn't say it. He's saying, you're saying that we can't, that, I just don't understand how, like, essentially you're saying we just need to tell them no. We have to say it. And not just tell them, no, you have to take things away from them. You can't just say, because we've said no to them before. How forcefully, I don't know, I think it's pretty debatable. But right now, they're having their

cake and they're eating it too. I mean, we are doing all the heavy lifting in this war for them, but we're also continuing to provide them so much military assistance. We're providing their defense package for them. So we have to go to them and we have to say not just no, but you're going to run any strikes by us. And also, you're not going on the offense anymore. You're done being on the offense. If you're attacked, we'll back you up.

If you guys want to do military operations on your own border, that's your country, fine. What takes place now in Iran, that affects us, that affects the GCC, that affects the Straits of Hormuz and world energy, you're done. We have to say that to him, and we have to take away things that make it so that they can only do their own defense. They can't go on the offense.

Until we do that, I don't think the Iranians actually will take us very seriously. We don't have a problem doing that to any other country in the world. Pretty crazy, right? Why do we have reluctancy to do it to Israel? I mean, there's obviously the Israeli lobby factor, APAC and all the other surrogates that spend so much money on our elections. There's major donors. Miriam Edelson gave, I mean,

someone can look this up, like, I think, $100 million to the Trump's campaign. And she's not the only, she's, you know, someone can look it up. I'm not sure exactly that's on my head, significant. And there's other really prominent donors that are very pro-Israel, many of whom are dual citizens. Oh, yeah, I mean, the owner of only fans, he just died today. Right, big APEC, right? He was the biggest donor to APEC. Right.

Did you know that? I just learned that today, actually. I had to check that myself because I wasn't aware of that until he passed away. He was fucking dead now. Yeah. Yeah. So we've got a Pampu funds Apex so that we can go to, yeah, make it make sense. But I think the Israeli lobby is part of it.

But I also think that there is a massive outpouring of support from like the evangelical community in America, evangelical Christians. And also I think a lot of people, especially the baby boomer generation, have just been led to believe that Israel is a democracy. The Israelis, you know, they speak English. They sound like us. I've dealt with the Israelis quite a bit. Like they're pretty pleasant to deal with.

They're easy to deal with. I mean, because a lot of them are educated in America. It's easy to get complacent around the Israelis because they don't have that foreign feel. And so they do a good job of selling, hey, we have the same interest here, man. We're just the same same. So a lot of it is financial.

You have a spiritual component to it. And then you also have the Israelis basically, by providing us of a lot of intelligence and potential access, even though I think a lot of that is to inform us, is to influence us rather than inform. Yeah, you had already mentioned that a lot of that stuff isn't in the Intel pipeline. Right, exactly.

What is the Intel pipeline? What is it? What is the flow of Intel from the field to the top? Well, I mean, it depends on what manner of intelligence it is. But stuff that we get, and you know this from your past life, when we get information, especially from like a foreign liaison service, like it always has that caveat, like could be used to influence and inform. everyone knows what they're reading.

If you want to lean heavily on the inform side and you're a partner of ours that has access to senior decision makers, you bypass the intel guys because they're going to check your stuff. They're going to put it through a vetting process. They're going to put it through analytical tradecraft. If you want to short-circuit that,

then you go directly to key decision makers and you say, hey, I've got some intel for you. It hasn't gone through the intel channels. And a lot of those senior decision makers, although they have access to 18 intelligence agencies and top senior clearances, they're not familiar of Intel. And so they might not know that there's a vetting process that needs to take place. Or things are happening so quick, they don't have time to think about it.

So the Israelis with their access, and again, a lot of that access comes from the media, it comes from the donors, it comes from just a certain familiarity and comfort that we have with the Israelis. They're able to push that in there. We get intel, I mean, Intel, as you know, it's not 100%, it's not always accurate, but when we get intelligence from the field, whether it's from a human source signal or a liaison, there's a vetting process that has to take place there before it goes and finished Intel. And then usually it's explained how we got the intel.

Again, the Israelis have done a really good job of putting an in-run on that system to circumvent it. Yeah, you know, the reason I'm asking, I'm just wondering if the, which pretty much already described it, if the intelligence that Iran had nuclear weapons went to. through the proper channels. It didn't. We know it didn't. Yeah. It just didn't.

Who's the gate? Who's the gate that's keeping real intel from getting to Trump? That's a good question. I mean, he, in theory, has control over who he has around him. He's the president. He's the commander in chief. Somebody's stopping real information from getting to him. Yeah, clearly.

Or maybe he just doesn't want to hear it. I don't know what the case is. Do you think he might not want to hear it? I think he got sold. like a pretty clean equation. They were like, hey, the protesters are protesting. The Iranians at the negotiating table have said they still want to enrich. Because they, again, they moved, them moving that red line, the Israelis and their allies moving that red line and making Trump basically think that the U.S. policy is no enrichment. It was very effective. And so they made it

seem like the negotiations had stalled out when in fact, I don't think they had. I think Steve Wickoff could have gotten this a deal back in June. I think they just sold them a very simple rushed equation to get us into this conflict. A big part of getting a quick action like this is rushing the president and telling him, hey, the protesters were just out there in June. We don't have time, in July,

I'm sorry, in January, we don't have time for a long deliberation. We need to conduct these strikes now. And so I think they took away a lot of his decision-making space and time and only put a handful of advisors around him. And maybe those are the people that he requested, but because he thought that he was under the gun for a time

crunch, I don't think he had enough time to really fully assess that. A lot of people are saying that your resignation and change of heart is because of influence from your wife. Is there any validity to that? No, no, no at all. I mean, we share very similar views. It's one of the reasons we probably got married, but. Right on.

Yeah. I got to address that it's out there. Sure, sure. But all right, Joe, I want to take a break when we come back. I just want to talk about how what this means for the midterms, what this means for the next election, what this means for the Republican Party,

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Yep. Maga split. Yep. CNN just put a, what, a poll out that said 100% of MAGA. What do they say? 100% of MAGA supports the Iran War. I don't think they're wrong. I just think a lot of people have left MAGA.

A lot of people have left MAGA. Well, that end, I think our political opponents would love us to believe that this very unpopular thing we're doing is popular to convince us to keep doing it. Yeah. I mean, I'd be very wary, obviously, of CNN. I don't know why we're even listening to CNN. It's insane. I'm not. That came from somebody on the staff here.

No, but it's true. I saw that too. Yeah. So, yeah. But I actually don't watch any mainstream media, not Fox, not any of it. It's all fucking garbage. It is. But what does this mean?

What are you seeing? So I think the conclusion. Conventional wisdom would tell you, and I think the president was told this, I think the president was told that wartime presidents are always popular. Like if you look at Bush's approval rating after both the launch in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was his highest ratings yet. So that's the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom also says that most Americans, they don't really care about foreign policy. But what they do care about is they care about the price of the pump. And look at what this conflict has already done at the price of the pump.

What's already done to cost living? And we already had an inflation crisis, and Trump was working on getting us out of it. But look at the effect that the war, especially what's happening in the Straits, is going to have on all these everyday issues that your average really hardworking person who's, you know, busting their butt to stay above water. They might not say like that's because of the Iran war and dig deeply into the policy. But they're going to be like, oh, the party that's in power right now screwed this up. I'm going to vote for the other guy. And then you have the MAGA issue. It's not even just this country.

Yeah. We're talking about a global economic depression here. Yeah. Staring a fucking global economic depression. Yeah. Potential famine because the fertilize. I mean, it's just the magnitude. You looking at famines?

America, I don't think we will, but the amount of fertilizer that needs those petrochemicals that come out of the Gulf that rely on the Straits of Humoos flowing freely, I mean, that's a major problem. It's going to be a major problem, I think first for Europe, I think for Africa, for Asia. I think America, we can insulate ourselves to a certain extent. We're definitely going to feel it in terms of the inflation. We're already feeling it. The gas prices are back up like we're back in the Biden era again, unfortunately. So I think that's going to factor heavily on voters. And then the MAGA issue, man, the people that, like, were hardcore who were small dollar donors to President Trump and to candidates like me when I was running with his endorsement,

them not coming out or them being disenfranchised or them being um he endorsed him this war he endorsed me twice trump endorsed you yeah twice on his speech day made it sound like he just felt sorry for you because your wife died in combat yep and he just like handed you a job which which honestly i was listening to that i'm like if that's how you hand jobs out to your fucking administration no wonder we're in the fucking place we're at yeah you just handed out pity jobs here you go yeah i mean Maybe look at their background. And, you know, this is how we wind up with people like fucking Sebastian Gorka. I think Trump just got to a, they put him into a position where he needed to say something about painting.

I think he's frustrated because I'm doing these, I'm doing these media appearances. So he's going to fire back. Like, I just, for me, I don't take it personally. I want him to just focus on what we're talking about, focus on getting us out of this crisis. And then also, like, like you said, for the midterms, I mean, you're going to need a lot of hardcore MAGA people to come out, to knock on doors, to do that hardcore work. Because working elections, it's not easy. It's not fun. It's not glamorous. The MAGA base, Trump's base, they're hardworking people. And they got them across the finish line. In 26, a lot of them, now it's debatable how much, but a good chunk of them are going to have a really hard time doing that because of the way this last year is gone.

Don't come banging on my fucking door. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear more of those fucking lies. I hear that from a lot of people. I hear it from a lot of people. It's everything, Joe. It's everything. You see the glyphosate stuff? I did. I did. The Make America Healthy Again movement.

Right. Immunity. Immunity. Yep. Because of what? A national security issue? Do you know how many people fucking died of cancer last year? 618,000.

That's not a national security concern? You know where the highest concentration of glyphosate is? is. It's in Iowa. Do you know where the highest concentration of cancer is? Iowa. It's in Iowa. Yeah. And he just gave him immunity. Yeah. We're calling the fentanyl crisis of national security concern. That's 100,000 people. Cancer is 618,000 fucking people in one year. Yeah. And he just gave him immunity. Yeah. Yeah, I think your, I think your frustration and your anger is felt by a lot of people who voted, who campaigned. The Epstein files?

Really believed. The Epstein fells, yeah. What fuck is that? Right. Are you serious right now? We're just going to let people that are raping and killing and exploiting kids sexually. Right. Just run free.

But we're going to put, we're going to sit the FBI on Joe Kent. It's insanity. And it's going to have. have a ramification. I know he's probably not being told this at the White House, but it's going to have a ramification on the elections. It just will. I mean, the coalition that we had was something, I think, very, very special in the sense that you had a lot of people who probably didn't, don't consistently vote, who we got mobilized with our message. President Trump's economic populism, his desire, at least stated desire to go after the deep state, no new wars, the Make America Healthy Again movement,

all of those coalescing into what became the MAGA movement in 2024, giving them the electoral college and the popular vote. I think over the course of the last year, that coalition has been very, very fractured. And people will say I'm fracturing the coalition right now. I'm not fracturing the coalition. The coalition is very fractured because of our actions. I want to preserve the coalition. I want the coalition to last because I think that formula, I think what President Trump and Vice President Vance ran on in 24 is the right message, it is the right formula for America and for our country, but we've got to be serious.

If we promised to deliver and we didn't deliver, we've got to be serious about that and we've got to show people that we're going to correct that. I don't think there's any coalition left. I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you. The formula they made in 2024 of those shows that it can be done. And going after the deep state, we haven't seen one indictment.

We haven't seen anything, nothing. We've seen look the other way. Are we still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? That's what we see. No, the CIA, the FBI, all these powerful institutions are still very much intact. And they're still very much calling the shots. And that's a huge problem for the freedom and security of our country. So there's a lot of things in this administration.

I think needs to get serious about if we're going to fix things. Obviously, this war being the most pressing. But I think this last year of us attempting to govern is going to have a major ramification in the midterms and then definitely in 28. If we don't get serious about turning it around for sure. What are your aspirations now? What's next for you?

The next week or two, I really want to push as hard as I can to attempt to reach the president. And I know that puts me in the line of fire and then the news cycle and people sniping at me online. But that's the only plan I truly had leaving this. The way I look at it is I already kind of got to do my shout-led-ed dream like in our old line of work, you know. I got to do that and everything else is kind of gravey.

I want to be able to serve my country. I care deeply about the future of this country. I care deeply about the future that we leave for our kids. So whatever capacity I end up working or serving at, as long as I feel like I can influence, to make sure I'm using my life experiences and what I've been through to affect a better outcome for our country. And I think national security is probably the best place that I can do that, that I'm happy. I didn't take resigning lightly.

But once I made the decision, I felt clarity that I don't think I felt ever in my life that this is the right thing to do. So. Hope you're the first of many that make a statement like that. Are you worried for your safety? No, I'm not. I'm worried for my family. But as a father, you know, you're always worried. You're always worried for your family.

I have a strong family, strong extended family, strong friend network. Like we were just talking about, you know, at the break and when I got here, the outpouring of support from veterans, from people I served with, from, you know, people that are part of the, whatever movement this is, it's been amazing. So obviously the security worries are always there in the back of my head. But, you know, I think God's on our side and I think we'll be okay. Are we going to see you?

In a midterm, your name pop up in any midterm elections? Not in a midterm, man. I got the running for Congress out of my system. I'm living in Virginia right now, and I don't think there's much of a prayer where I live for a Republican of my politics to get elected. So no, definitely not in the midterms. I don't really have a desire to run for office again.

It was a good experience. I'm glad I did it. I'm also glad it didn't work out because I've kind of had to interact enough now with Congress in my last job that, man, that does not look enjoyable at all. But I want to serve in this capacity. If we're able to get someone into the White House who wants to put this country first, they're going to need people that understand the national security apparatus and how to tackle it and reorient it towards American priorities.

So I'd be happy to serve in that capacity. What about 2028? Same thing. I think I get help craft good policies and come up with attack plans. I mean about a run. Run. I have no plans to run. for president in 2028.

Running for Congress is challenging enough. I can't imagine doing it in 28. A problem with our politics in general is the amount of fundraising that you need to do. And I hated doing that and I really have zero desire ever again to go ask people

to cut me a check. But you have to. You've got to be a relentless fundraiser to make it in politics today. And it's tough because there's so much money out there. And this is like literally how our politicians end up getting bought.

Like if they don't take the check, and then the other guy, their competitor is going to take the check. And so that's what a lot of it comes down to. And I'd much rather stay in the national security realm where I think I can contribute more anyways than never have to go beg donors for money ever again. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up. Spring activities, testing season,

and that final push toward the end of the year. It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning. That's where I-XL comes in. I-XL is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork, from math and reading to writing and science. It's designed for pre-k through 12th grade, with personalized interactive content that adapts to each child's level and pace. I-Excel makes it easy to stay on track with instant feedback and clear explanations, skills organized by grade level, and simple progress tracking.

It fits into even the busiest spring schedules. It's also trusted nationwide. In fact, IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get I-Excel now. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off I-XL membership when they sign up today at Iexel.com forward-slash-t Today. Visit Ixl.com forward-slash-t Today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. How do we solve the APEC problem?

I think we need heavy legislation and regulation on the ability for foreign governments to come in and even using cutouts. PAC will say, no, no, no, this isn't any, this isn't affiliated with Israel. These are Americans who support Israel. And that, I think by and large, is true. But they're advocating for policies that just support a foreign government. So there's got to be some regulation on, you know, foreign agents. There's got to be some regulation on having political fundraising packs and mechanisms that just support the agenda of a foreign country. What that is, I don't exactly know, me there's what is it what is that change if they register as a foreign agent because it's Saudi's got a huge yeah huge lobbying for yeah so what does that change I think it changes much

I think you just are aware it's more of a upfront to my knowledge someone can fact check me on this I'm not a foreign agent registry expert by any means but I think once someone is registered under FARA like they can't get a government contract okay I think they can resign from the position they're in where they had to register under FAR and then I think they can slide back into you. It's not like a forever thing by any means. The problem with the money side is that the Supreme Court basically ruled that money is speech and just like they can't tell you what you can and can't say. The government can't tell you how you can spend your money. So if you want to put your money into a super PAC, you can put an unlimited amount in there. And I think that's basically

been the death of our political system ever since. That makes a make. makes it very possible for elections to be bought. Because money is fungible, I think it's hard to actually create a firewall around that. All right, Joe, we're wrapping up the interview here. Got a hot question for you. Totally different to change of pace here. So try to lighten it up a little bit. Joe, the last time you were on the show, we aired a clip called Inside the Military's Most Secretive Unit.

That thing did 2.8 million views on YouTube. This time around, we actually had Claude, the AI, scrape the data on your YouTube performance, dig through sources across the internet, and help us build this question. Oh, man. What came back was very interesting. When you were operating in that secretive unit doing those missions, most people will never hear about, what was your go-to combat loadout and why? Ooh, that's a great question.

So it depends on obviously where I was working. I would say a consistent factor for me, because I was predominantly in the Middle East in dangerous places, was either a Glock 19 or a Glock 43 or for an ADC. A Glock 43? Yeah, the little guy. Holy shit. You're running around with a Glock 43? Depends on what I was wearing and where I was.

There's the else, what was at the 20, is it the 26 as well, the 26? I think it's the little fatter, double-stack version. But usually a Glock 19. I like the Glock 19 because it's a good, you can conceal it, but it's still a full-size. pistol, you know, you got the 15 plus one. Cameras heavily as well, just for the type of work that we did. What kind of cameras? Small digital camera, like a small, you know, like pocket size.

Some of our guys would use bigger ones depending on what mission they would do. But then I did a lot of human intelligence. So a huge part of my EDC was a pen and a paper and probably about $1,000 of cash on me. because no pen, no paper, no intel. And if you don't pay them, they don't come back. Yeah. Yeah. Did you carry a bolt bag or anything?

Like a go bag? Like a little... Yeah. Yeah. I did. Yeah. I had a little beat-up North Face career bag that I still have somewhere that I got like an 05, and it was like almost a superstition that I had to take that on every deployment with me. And that would be like my little bug out of the vehicle bag.

Never a long gun? No, definitely a long gun. Yeah, yeah, for sure. What long gun? For sure. So we had 416s for a little bit, and then just standard, you know, AR. No MP7? You know, I rolled with an MP7 a couple times, but it's just a little thing.

The bullet I was always a little skeptical on. I know some guys, I'd heard people say they shot folks with it, and it was fine. It did the job. It always seemed really little to me. There's pictures of me with an Uzi. They used an Uzi for a trip as like a lap gun in a car. Used an Uzi? Yeah.

That's awesome. Yeah, because it had a great suppressor on it. At the time, we didn't have, we had MP5s, but we didn't have suppressed ones. And the suppressor on the Uzi was sweet. So I used that kind of my lap gun in the car. Big fan of the UMP 45s too. I thought those. Oh shit. You guys had those? We had those, yeah. And running around Baghdad, I thought that was great because everything was so close quarters in Baghdad and he just needed the stopping power, especially working in a car. Yeah. Damn, well, I got you a present. Do you want to see it? Absolutely. It's a long gun. Is the long gun? Are you serious? I'm serious. I thought it was going to be gummy bears.

You're in luck. My kids will be happy. This is what they care about. I'll give you another one. Have you seen these? Yeah. Dude. You know, with the FBI investigation, I don't know if you're going to get cleared for this thing.

But, yeah, this is a SIG, the SIG, spear chambered in 6.8, brand new optic. And then, so Sig wanted me to give this to him. Wow, that's incredible, man. Thank you so much. And then silencer shop jumped in, too. So they put this suppressor on here. And the good thing about silencer shop is once you sign up with them and you get everything done, that makes the process go a lot smoother, a lot easier getting suppressors,

the class three items stuff. So anyways. This is incredible, man. Thank you so much. Say, what a beautiful gun. You want to rip a couple off out back? Yeah, of course. Definitely.

Man, this is beautiful. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, man. Why just happen to have some 6.8 out there, so we wrap this up, we'll go. Definitely. Wow, this is amazing. Go blow some shit up.

I really like that thing. That's nice. Yeah. I haven't shot this before. It feels really good. Yeah. I think you're going to like it. I think so too.

There's a follow-on question. You're going to go back into combat tomorrow. What would you... If they institute the draft and we'll have to go back to Iran or the Middle East... You're going to be like jokes on you smart asses. What would your load out look like today? With all the new tech and weapon systems, the military has developed since you were on the ground list? I would need to get spun up on the...

the drones and the counter drones. That's what I was going to say. I mean, I can, you know, talk about long guns and pistols all day long, but the fight nowadays, man, with those FPV drones and that technology, I would get hot on that as fast as I possibly could. And then how to defend, I think, how do you defend any kind of, like, small formation that you have? Like, what system can you carry around to at least have a fighting chance against those things?

that'd be my first uh my first task i think i'd get really good at 3d printing yeah exactly exactly yeah some that the technology coming off the battlefield in the ukraine it's just incredible all right last thing you know this is live this is live on my patreon right now so we took some questions as we were doing the interview so let's crank through some of these this is from eva evans thank you so much mr kent for your bravery and honesty what is your advice to the younger generations who may have to drive to severe, excuse me, to serve humanity in the midst of this chaos, but also do not agree with the objective and agenda of this current administration. To serve humanity.

Yeah, I think she's saying, you know, join the military. Oh, to join the military. Go to war with Iran. Yeah. That's what she's alluding to. Look, I hope we can be effective and walk this back and get us out of it. I think a key part of that, and especially for the war with Iran. And especially for the people that are while, you have a huge audience.

I think for people who feel like they can't do anything, I think them calling their senators, calling their congressmen, going to the president's websites and social medias, and just saying politely that they are against this, I think that's probably one of the most effective things we can, we can have to do to get out of this. I think for people that find themselves in the military or have to be in the military,

I think your first obligation really is to the man and woman on your left and right, like make sure they come home. job to do. That's why we're trying to sort out the policy from from our end. But before you join, I mean, take a good, hard look at what's going on right now, and only you can make the decision if this is something that you're willing to support with your life. And don't rush that decision. Again, my goal is to make it so that we can send people back into the military, knowing their leaders will only deploy them against a vital national security interest. But yeah, right now, we need to have all, all voices need to be heard right now to say that we, we are against what's

taking place. Let our elected leaders know that. Well said, man. Well said. This is from Lila Restivo. What criteria should be met before deploying U.S. troops into conflict? How can we ensure accountability from leadership when wars do not have clear objectives or protection out of, or protection of outcomes? It's a great question and they basically give the answer in there. I think our leaders need to say before they deploy people into harm's way, this is the objective. This is why I'm sending you to this country. I'm sending to this country to accomplish this military objective and then quickly be able to articulate why that objective is in our vital national security interest.

And America's vital national security interest. Why, if we don't take out this threat, it's going to harm Americans. That has to be very, very clear up front. And it has to come from the commander in chief. I understand there's like the War Powers Act and there's certain things that Congress should be able to do, but as fast as things move, this largely rests at the executive branch, unfortunately. Unless the Congress is willing, unless we elect enough people in Congress that are willing to withhold funding from the military, unless for, or for operations, unless there's actually

a war powers declaration. Roger. This is from Zach. Since you know all that we can do, which changes would you like to see at NCTC that would be most beneficial to see? citizens that we protect. Hmm. That's a tough one. I think in terms of, yeah, that's a very good question. I think in terms of screening and vetting, it's a big part of what NCTC does to make sure

when people come into the country, they don't have ties to a terrorist organization. There's a lot of different agencies that touch screening and vetting in America. In the U.S. government, it's a very complicated bureaucracy. I think there basically needs to be one central clearinghouse for screening and vetting to decide if someone has ties to a terrorist organization or not and whether or not they should be allowed in. The problem is there's a bunch of different ways and there's a bunch of people who have equities and are able to say whether or not folks are let in. I think there needs to be one agency for that and that should be NCTC.

I'm from Declan. Iran is known to harbor many terrorists who are actively training and planning to attack the U.S. home front through sleeper cells. Former CIA targeter Sarah Adams has prove this through open intelligence channels. All this considered, why is Iran not a threat to the United States? So the question was, is Iran an imminent threat? And based on what Secretary Rubio said and what we've talked about here today, the only imminent threat was Israel attacking Iran. Is Iran a threat to America? Iran has been a threat to America. And there's other countries that are threats to America as well. The question is, how do you deal with those threats? My issue is us, us being part of the Israeli agenda, but then also using a massive conventional attack on Iran as the way of dealing

with the threat that Iran poses, I think is wrong. I think we'd be much better off doing targeted CT operations against Iranian proxies or Iranian leaders, not doing a massive regime change that results in Straits of Hormuz being closed, and then also a rally around the flag that reinforces the hardliners inside of Iran. think they would institute a draft if they had to for this war? If they do that, then the war is going to fail really quickly, because I just don't think the American people are willing to saddle up their sons and daughters for the draft. If they could get away with it, I think they'd be tempted to do it because it'd be like

all options on the table, right? Like if they say, like, if we get so far sucked into this thing, kind of like we did in the Iraq war, where it's like we can only win by applying a massive amount of. on-ground troops. Iran is so big we can't do it with the standing military that we have right now as big as it is. We would have to do a draft. Now, I think a negative to the downside of the all-volunteer force we've had is that it's been very easy to deploy us and most Americans don't really know or care that we've been deployed because we volunteered for it. We have professional soldiers. I think a draft is actually a good check on that. I think compulsory service, I think if there

was more people right now who they had to go do two years in the military and they were like, oh, crap, my two years are going to involve this Iran deployment. I think a lot more people in America. And that was felt by the entire American population that every able-bodied man and woman was eligible for a two-year period to go serve. Wars like this wouldn't happen, in my opinion. That is a very interesting point of view that I have not thought about. Yeah. As much as I don't like the idea of conscripting people or having mandatory service because I liked the professional warrior class that we were a part of. I like serving with volunteers. The problem of volunteers is, man, we'll just keep going back. And you'll create

a professional warrior class. And then we'll, like I did, we'll intermarry and we'll live in our tight communities. Everybody I know is a veteran. And so we have an insular community. And we're the only ones that experience the war, experience the loss. And we keep going back over and over again. Whereas if you spread out that burden to the entire country, it makes it almost impossible to keep us at war for a prolonged period. The only reason the reason that Vietnam War ended is because there was popular that the people basically revolted against it because of the draft. And that's a big reason why I think after Vietnam, they were like, we can't draft people anymore. Let's create a professional military.

Damn. I have not thought about it like that. Makes a lot of sense. This is from Donnie. If Iran was not an immediate threat, then what threats are there that we should be the most concerned about? If Iran was not an immediate threat? If Iran was not an immediate threat, he wants to know what are the threats that we should be most concerned about? I think we should be worried about the fact that we had to open borders in this country for four plus years that we talked about.

And the sheer volume of potential known suspected terrorists, known suspected terrorists that are here, our main focus should be getting our homeland straight, first and foremost. There's other threats from al-Qaeda in Yemen, al-Qaeda in Syria. There's a lot that we don't know that's taking place in Afghanistan that Sarah's talked about at Nazium on your show. So there still is CT threats out there. I mean, there still are people that we do need to hunt down and kill because they seek to do us harm. Again, that's why this, another reason why this conflict in Iran concerns me so much, because all of our resources are going to be sucked up there. And Al-Qaeda and ISIS and all of our adversaries are going to take this time to rebuild and probably attack.

In China. And China, man. They're raking in the cash right now. I mean, this is working out in their favor. For people who are very, very worried about Russia, same thing. I mean, their energy is, their energy surplus is going to be reintroduced to the market at a greater value. Man. Well, Joe, that pretty much concludes the interview.

But once again, man, I, I am serious. Thank you. Thank you for what you did. I know that was a tough decision. And like I said, I know that took a lot of courage. But what an example you are, man. Thanks, brother. I appreciate it.

Thank you. What it means to be an American. Thank you. I appreciate it. Fucking awesome what you're doing. So God bless. Thank you. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from,

if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and leave us a review. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up, spring activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year. It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning.

That's where Iexel comes in. I Excel is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork, from math and reading to writing and science. It's designed for pre-K through 12th grade, with personalized interactive content that adapts to each child's level and pace. I-X-L makes it easy to stay on track with instant feedback and clear explanations, skills organized by grade level, and simple progress tracking. It fits into even the busiest spring schedules. It's also trusted nationwide. In fact, I-Excel is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S.

Make an impact on your child's learning. Get I-Exel now. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off I-XL membership when they sign up today at I-XL.com forward slash today. Visit IxL.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.